Egg Hunt Revised

My sisters and I got together yesterday evening after the kids had gone to bed to put together all of the easter "baskets". Eric and I bought the Lightning McQueen basket at Target on one of our outings. The baskets for the boys and Natalie were from previous years.

Melissa had the colored bags. Cynthia had cute, clear wrapped packages with mesh ribbon and nametags printed out from the computer. Her packages were the clear crafty winner. We went ahead and removed the nametags an put them on Melissa's bags so the kids could tell which was which. Alex still couldn't tell which soccer basket was his. I usually use his camo basket, but he's got that hidden in his room somewhere from last year. He figured it out based on the fact that I had put "5" brand gum in his basket and Anthony doesn't chew gum.

When the girls found their baskets, we thought it was interesting that they were trying to figure out who they got certain items from. They thought the craft gift was either from Cynthia or me, but in reality it was from Melissa.

We had Shipley doughnuts and kolaches for breakfast then headed to 9am mass. After mass, before they could all get out of their Sunday best, we took pictures. Alex and Nick were the most difficult to get to smile, and from the looks of this picture, Eric was showing his solidarity.

We did the Easter Egg Hunt a little differently this year. We sent the boys out with 40 eggs (10 per child) to hide the eggs for the girls and for Eric. Then we sent Patrick and John out to hide the 30 eggs for the boys. We let the girls and Eric look for their eggs first. Eric did pretty well since the obvious eggs were still there for him to find, as opposed to when we let all of them go looking for eggs at the same time. He was easily able to count his own eggs so we could keep track to make sure we stopped when we got to 10 eggs each. He did need some help climbing to the top of the playhouse roof where he had spotted a bright blue egg.

Here they are all gathered around to see what was inside the eggs. Eric was so pleased that one of the eggs had four pennies in it--because he's four years old. He is too cute!

The boys got to look for their eggs next. John bragged about hiding some eggs very well to really challenge the boys. Nick must have been checking out the eggs when he was hiding them. He made a beeline for the egg that he knew had a dollar in it. He had hidden it under some broken egg shells from yesterday's activity. John had hidden one of the eggs in his back pocket. When Anthony figured it out, he almost mauled John to get it. Alex had more trouble looking for the eggs. Even when the egg was right in front of him, he would look past it. This was a much more "controlled" and "sedate" egg hunt than in the past. Usually the big boys find all the eggs quickly and the little ones struggle. I like to think that the big boys enjoyed a little challenge too.